March TIF

Photofinishing March's TIF. Too many things happening and i guess that's a sign of Spring. Since the concept was the small things in life i wanted to work with lines and basic forms and started by way of animation
Then continued experimenting with doodles and i never got to post about them. In short here is the distilled concept, a spirograph image drawn on printed silk organza. The spirograph circle is like the mandala of life and the stitching is straight stitch and seed stitch, very basic stitches conveying the idea of simplicity. All of it on gray commercial felt. The choice of felt is because it's one of the basic textiles since the beginning of times and gray belongs to the trinity of basic colors black , white and gray.

Changing direction, the other day i got a comment presumably from the anti black background brigade. i have been pondering a blog makeover, but i don't think it includes changing the background color, the reason for black background being that photos look very well. You have to be a darn good photographer to have a white background and blogs with crummy photos are one of my pet peeves. As we are all approaching a certain age and textile people's vision ages more quickly than others :) there's a solution for dancing typography. You just hit control and+(CTRL+) and type becomes bigger and more readable.
Oh key shortcuts! whoever invented them deserves purgatory points :)

neki desu

o hanami

Small things in life, birthday gift, Ueno sakura in full bloom.

Go here to learn about hanami

neki desu

screen printing fun

During the recent limping phase it was somewhat difficult to walk, but stand up i could. And so i did.Had lots of fun printing this cotton duck fabric that will hopefully be turned into a tote bag.
Deconstructed screen printing aka breakdown printing is very liberating. There's really no way you can wreck a piece of fabric. One way or another it gets salvaged.

This was a leftover piece which i stamped using a Print Gocco master and some thickened pigment. i like how pigments behave so i foresee more experimenting with them.

Sorry for the colors as they came out a bit washed out and no PS could spunk them. It's the light, as it has been cloudy lately.

neki desu

inspiring blog meme

The flower was given to me by my neighbor and i'm using it here to illustrate the color of my right eye after i tripped and fell flat on my face last Thursday. Still limping because i also hurt a toe, but on my way to being back in the swing of things, as i've been printing over Easter. Husband-san has been a champ and so was the lady that picked me up from the pavement.

Ok, ten blogs that are a source of inspiration:

Anica for the humor and positive outlook in her work
Jude need i say why?
The Missus ditto
Obachan's Kitchen food and Japan :) :)
Elisabeth -Quieter Moments- what she does with needle and thread is amazing
Grijs design and flair
Weaverly my weaving guru
Rang the Colors of Life inspiring photos and the mood
Aidan Brooks Trainee Chef food and a foreigner's look on the city where i live
Daily Writing Tips what do you want? i love grammar
Maditi-likes there's life and creativity outside our boundaries

Stop.

neki desu

Happy Easter everyone!

Here's to human kindness

neki desu

autodenter

Warp already reeded, now some minor adjustments and it will be a weaving Easter.
This gizmo is an autodenter, a very high tech sounding name for a mechanical tool :) and it came from here.
It does make denting easier once you've tamed the beast, which tends to fall apart in the beginning as it comes with a built- in learning curve. It should also come with tranquilizers, but no such luck.
In spite of all the above once you master it it's easy to use and efficient.
Some recommendations:

• i've noticed it works better( imo) with denser reeds, 10-15 ends x cm. and thin yarns. Actually, for thicker yarns and wider spaced reeds there is no need for one.
• You have to control the side push or else you'll skip dents. Yes, that happens!
• i'd start with 20-30 threads tied to the back of the loom and practice till you get the swing of it as it can generate some stress in the beginning. Then when you feel confident move on to using it fully.

This is just a visual presentation of the tool. go here for a vid on how to use it.




neki desu

things are not what they were

Actually, nothing is the way it was anymore :) . Had to rig the loom with a magnifying glass in order to be able to thread the 15 ends X cm reed. And this is a rather open sett. And having trouble still.Thinking that this project can qualify for the small things in life TIF as the yarn is very small.
And it could also qualify for slow cloth as i've been warping and threading for 2 weeks.

The warp is silk doupioni dyed with kakishibu and ai. The kakishibu ranges from a golden brown to an almost black and the ai is a light blue value. Still debating whether the weft is going to be a peachy kakishibu silk or a medium dark ai silk. It's going to be a very simple crepe weave because the emphasis will be on the colors. The crepe will add just a bit of texture and the colors will gain depth with the way crepe reflects and absorbs light.
And this stole is for yours truly.

For the fast track lane i have been screen printing some fabric. It is batching so i will post it later on the week.

neki desu

more shibori

These handkerchieves were found in Yonezawa a town in Yamagata-ken in the northern part of Honshu, the main island.

Why did i go out there? Weaving and dyeing, of course! Along with its beef, toys and winter sports Yonezawa is also known for its indigo dyeing. And for being a very charming small town.

For Japanese standards these handkerchieves were inexpensive so i thought they might not be indigo, but now that i can read some Japanese it came as a very pleasant surprise to know they are real indigo! The top one is kumo shibori and the bottom one is an itajime. Notice the lovely greenish cast.

The left one is tazuna stitching and tsuki-dashi dots shibori and the right one is kumo shibori not ironed flat so it still holds the lovely raised texture. They are also indigo dyed.

This last one was bought in Tokyo in a small shop in Ya-Ne-Sen. It seemed unusual to me because the kumo dots were first wound to reserve the white of the cotton handkerchief, dyed a soft grey and bound again and dyed red, thus resulting in grey colored background kumo shibori. It was dyed with synthetic dyes, but that's ok :)

neki desu

small things that make me happy

A list of small things that make me happy has to begin with trading ATCs. Just look what Ati sent me. Thanks for making me such a happy camper Ati :)

The rest would be:

• a good indigo vat
• morning glories in the summer
• a well warped loom
• a comment on my blog
• an e-mail from my sister
• fados( strage thing, they reek saudade!)
• recognising a kanji
• morning chill
• those days working in a state of grace
• evening port and cakes at A Casa Portugesa
• lunch with friends
• red skies
• daifukus
• an attractive fractal
  

i could go on, but let's keep it short.

neki desu

if it's march it has to be TIF

This month's TIF proposal is small things in life. Difficult, but interesting topic as small things are the stuff of life. They make life. Big things don't. They alter and change life, which is a different story, for better or for worse.

As a warm up i started out listing some small pleasant things that make up my life, but had to stop as a daft Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music complex overcame me.
Luckily i remembered Lady Sei Shonagon who in her book The Pillow Book makes endless lists including both annoying and pleasant things. That is more close to life than the Julie Andrews listing. It's also incredibly beautiful and full of textile descriptions of the silk kimonos worn by Heian court ladies.
What more can i ask for? Three of my small pleasures, books, textiles and things Japanese rolled in one.
i still have to make up my mind, but as of March 7 listing is my plan for this months challenge. How to make it textile is another challenge.

As you all know i'm also interested in animation and worked out a graphic representation of the small things that make up life .This is also a warm up exercise and i don't really know where all of this will take me. Stay tuned :)
Oh and for some techie stuff visit the TIF challenge blog

neki desu

more spyrograph

This post is more about multi-tasking than anything else. i have 2 screens covered with dye paste working hard to get dry in this awful humid weather we have. Therefore i can't print.
i am warping my 12 shaft loom, slow cloth here, and doing warp chains to warp the dobby loom for a loom controlled shibori that will-holding my breath here-eventually be indigo dyed as soon as the weather gets hotter. So no actual weaving nor dyeing -yet.

Needed something fun to do in between the warping the making of the chains and the waiting.
i had this idea of trying plastic bags before the disappear, late comer here, also wanted to keep on with the spyrograph and the challenge was to try and work it all without getting excessive :)
And have some fun, nothing serious here

Here's what i did:

• cut plastic bags in strips and assembled them grid like
  
• ironed them between parchment paper
• put a piece of poly organza over and ironed some more fusing both layers
• topped it all with some florist lutradur like paper that had been dabbed with white opalescent paint and a bit of painted bondaweb
  
• went wild stitching circlets with polyester thread
• zapped it with the heat gun, i'm in love with this gadget!!
  

Et voilà mesdames! Fun it was.
Now on with the warping.

neki desu

spirograph at last

Had been after a spirograph for some time now and finally got my hands on one. i think everyone who grew up in the fifties and sixties had one, it was one of those one day wonder toy that got discarded as soon as one could say the name in one breath. For young people didn't quite get it and thought it always made the same designs getting bored with it after a very short time.

Evidently i'm past that stage now and well into asking what if... So i wanted one to try it on fabric using textile pens as i think there are lots of possibilities here. Stitching, stamping, machine stitching or embroidering with the beloved flower stitching foot are some of the options i can think off the top. Not to mention using the spirograph as an exercise to help you get focused before you start studio work.

The first image shows some designs made on polyester organza. No matter how well taped it was, it shifted with the movement of the wheel. It also repelled the ink creating blurry images.

The second image is the same organza, this time treated with Golden Soft Gel medium. The gel medium primes the surface, gives some body to the otherwise flimsy fabric and makes the ink adhere to the surface giving a crisp line. It also alters the transparency of the fabric a bit, but i don't think it is noticeable. A word here, there are some artifacts on both images due to the images being scanned and not photographed. But notice the sharper lines on the second image.

i concentrated the tests to the round "layout" disk the one that has a hole in the center and it's used for donuts and flowers, well kind of, at least in my set, with the triangular shape used as a border. There are layout shapes that give triangular, rhomboid and square borders plus smaller disks which control the donuts and flower like motifs. Each disk has many small holes where you insert the pen and each hole produces a different effect/ design. You can also alter the designs by increasing or reducing the number of rotations or passes. Border motifs are also worth exploring.

Intrigued? Want to give it a go?
Here's a gift to get you started. Have fun! Oh! and if you think of more textile uses do leave a comment.

neki desu